Despite the fact that Nate is not a real threat to Cinco Bayou, the third-world nature of utilities on the Florida Panhandle may mean that I might disappear for a while. The electrical utilities have a standing mutual assistance agreement in place, but New Orleans, the casinos in Biloxi & Gulfport, Mobile, and Pensacola have priority over Cinco Bayou, Holt, Wing, and the other small towns along the coast.
On-line Opinion Magazine featuring annoyed rumblings from the leading edge of the Baby Boom firmly tied to a reality-based world.
Established: 21 November 2004
The opinions expressed in Comments are those of the individuals making them. Truly absurd comments and opinions are subject to being cruelly mocked, but "flame wars" will take place on someone else's dime.
Your first comment, all comments with extensive links, and random comments that the software decides it doesn't like for no discernible reason will be held for moderation.
[Be aware that for unknown reasons the software rejects comments shorter than 15 characters, so if you want to leave a short comment fill the gap with periods ........]
22 comments
Too bad you’re going to have to run away from home this time around! I really thought you might have dodged the bullet this year, but apparently not. Do the kitties like a road trip? (That was a joke.)
I’m not going anywhere, Juanita, but I could lose power and/or my Internet connection as both are on utility poles and both are coming from Pensacola. If we had local power generation and the Internet came from the fiber north of us, I wouldn’t have any concerns.
Two cats in a Honda Civic – I don’t think so ….
You’re quite right: The cats will demand a Lincoln Continental or they’ll refuse to go. But I’m more concerned about the aftermath: the Odious Idiot may come down and start throwing things again.
Bad idea in this county. If you throw something in the air, local people assume you want it shot.
Hope you got through with no power outages. That’s always a pain.
They were short but frequent early this morning. I stopped resetting the clocks at 7AM after the third outage. I assume it was electrical arcing due to the heavy rain.
I’m thinking we must have been getting the remnants of the tropical storm all night. Wind gusts over 50 mph and lots and lots of rain. But it’s not uncommon to get those types of wind gusts here anyway. I get the wind coming off the mountain towards the back of the house, so my yard has lots of small limbs and LEAVES everywhere.
I’m not going to bother with it except the larger limbs. Might as well wait a couple more weeks and then attack them when they all drop!
It’s still crazy at my house. Harry is in the breakfast room talking to a coffee can on the table, apparently some business discussion he’s having with it. He’s been at it for about an hour now. He occasionally asks it a question, but so far as I know, it hasn’t answered yet. Oh yeah, the leaves can wait.
The last pine on the property finally died this year as a result of being twisted [probably a microburst] during Ivan. It snapped off so I have to play lumberjack. It would have been fine if it was still green, but it got dry and brittle. Other than that it was leaves and twigs with about 8 or 9 inches of rain, which passes through the sand on its way back to the bayou.
It probably was Nate on his way to Canada, because it definitely extended east to the Appalachians.
Let us know if Harry closes the deal – that’s more than Trump can do.
Let us know if Harry closes the deal – that’s more than Trump can do.
So so true, sadly. The other day, Harry was having a similar conversation with the vacuum cleaner in the living room. These business deals are taking up a lot of his time these days! But I have a feeling that much of it is about as sensible as what’s happening in Washington right now. In fact, we might be better off if those people just talked to their vacuum cleaners, too.
Sorry you lost your pine. I hope you have some other trees in your yard besides the pines you lost. I have two huge red maples sitting off my deck blocking the mountain view, but I don’t have the heart to cut them down to open up the view, they are just so beautiful. Not sure what types of trees grow well in your sandy soil down there.
You can’t see the house on satellite photos because it is surrounded by live oaks, water oaks, camphor trees, crepe myrtles, magnolias, sugar berry, Chinese tallow, etc. a mixture of native and introduced varieties. Pines are protected in the town and there aren’t many left. They have a shallow root system and blow over easily if there is enough rain associated with a storm. Most of the native species are evergreen, so we rake leaves from some trees in autumn, but from others in the spring.
I was looking @ NYT and read about the wildfires lazing through CA’s Wine country. Looks pretty bad. I hope people are safe. The devastation looks bad. Reminds me of our firestorm in 2009. 🙁
Before and After Photos: Fires Tear Through California’s Wine Country
I’ve seen some speculation about the fires being deliberate. Time will tell I suppose.
No response from Twit45 of course. Most of CA hates him. He did challenge Rex to an IQ test (though I suspect the coward was joking). Would be interesting, if it was fair & real. My $$ would be on Rex. 🙂
Just in! I truly don’t know whether to laugh hysterically, or cry hysterically!
GOP official imagines Kelly and Mattis discussed tackling Trump in the event he ‘lunges for the nuclear football’
There are over a dozen people confirmed dead and over 100 missing with thousands of of structures destroyed. No one has any idea how much livestock or pets were killed by the rapidly advancing fires. It is similar to Black Saturday, but every disaster is unique, caused aby a particular set of circumstances. Of course the Federal government seems to be only marginally aware of the situation because the people who are supposed to be in charge of ofd such events still haven’t been hired by the Toddler-in Chief who is saving money by not hiring people to direct firefighting operations so he can fly to his golf resorts every weekend and his cabinet members can take private jets.
We need to start a Go-Fund-Me page that goes to veterans’ organizations if the Toddler-in-Chief takes the Minneapolis Multiphase Personality Test and the Miller Analogy Test and publishes the results.
I noticed that Tony Abbott flushed his future hopes for party leadership down the loo at the climate conference – climate change has been beneficial?! Sounds like he’s looking for a job at a coal or oil company.
I didn’t lose any electricity at all this time around. not even a blip to set off the clocks on the various appliances.
but then I was without power for 2 weeks after ivan and 4 or 5 days after dennis, so obviously I was overdue for a break on the electricity front. 😉
Well you live a lot closer to the generating plant than I do, and these sorts of outages are normally caused by arching at the local substation because of the rain. My power was restored by guys from a New Jersey power company after Ivan. These sorts of outages are common during strong thunderstorms.
Kryten, the word from local newspapers is that decrepit PG&E power poles falling over in high winds sparked the fires, there were multiple calls to local fire departments about fallen power poles sparking immediately prior to the outbreak of the fires. PG&E stands for “Pray Gamble & Explode” — aside from being the principal power company in the area they’re also our gas company, best known for blowing up an entire neighborhood by diverting maintenance money to corporate profit. They’ve been fined multiple times for doing that on the power pole maintenance budget too, but it never seems to change their behavior. I suppose jail time would, but jail is for little people, not for top executives of PG&E, all of whom have looted the homeowners of California for enough money to become millionaires.
I assume the poles dried out because of the drought and snapped in the wind. We used to have that problem, but now they are having to dig deeper holes and use longer poles because of the increase in rainfall. In the heavy rains the saturated ground allows the poles to move, so the wind can push them over. This is why our pine trees get blown over – shallow root system.
Not even SDG&E was as bad as PG&E, although I saw service entrances in the older section of San Diego that used 8-guage from the transformer.
The drought had nothing to do with the poles snapping in the wind. The fact that they were 50 years old and overdue for replacement 30 years ago probably had more to do with that. Some of the poles out there, I swear that the wires are holding the pole up, not the other way around. Some of the poles out there have sleeper poles strapped to them to keep them from falling over. Some of the poles have frickin’ *boards* strapped to them to keep them from falling over. It’s pathetic third-world BS.
BTW, on the two cats in a Honda Civic thing, I moved two cats across the country (from North Carolina to Arizona) in a Ford Aspire, much smaller than a Honda Civic. So it can be done, it just isn’t pleasant :).
During the evacuation for Hurricane Opal I spent almost 24 hours on the road with Koshka howling in the cab of a Toyota pickup, the 1988 compact version, getting from Fort Walton to Huntsville, Alabama. Traffic was jammed up so people were getting out of cars to walk their dogs, or dump their bladders and jogging to get back in. Trying to get both Excise and Property into the car would have required a quick stop for bandages and blood.
Hell, that crap is illegal even in Florida except for an emergency temporary fix.
Well you live a lot closer to the generating plant than I do
welllllll . . . I moved about 5 blocks away from my ivan location – a location in which I lost computers and light bulbs constantly – when I moved to the place I live in now, so I’m thinking that’s not quite the issue here. 😈
Yeah, the voltage is not well regulated on this section of the grid. If I didn’t have a regulated power supply and battery backup I would lose all sorts of electronic stuff. I bought all of the filtering and protection equipment for the San Diego grid which was just as bad.
It sounds like you were connected to a bad transformer, Gulf Power should have found if they were interested. With their new meters they wouldn’t even have to come out to see what was going on at any house.